Microsoft Dynamics 365 offers two versions that combine the Dynamics customer relationship management (CRM) and enterprise resource planning (ERP) offerings in one unified cloud-hosted solution.
The lower end version of the product is called Dynamics 365 Business Central and is based on Dynamics NAV as a framework. Dynamics 365 Finance is the higher end version, which is based on Dynamics AX and created for larger corporations in the top of the marketplace. Both are hosted by Microsoft and deployed in the Azure cloud.
We will explore what you should look for in a financial reporting tool for your organization to use with Dynamics 365, Enterprise Edition.
How to Choose the Right CPM Tool for Dynamics 365 Finance
Data integrations have always been the connective tissue for financial reporting and the variety of data types businesses rely on to understand the health of their organization. In this cloud era, they’re arguably even more important.
Some questions to ask before choosing your CPM solution:
- Do you require real-time analyses that you often accomplish directly through Dynamics 365 (D365)?
- Is your team looking for more robust financial reporting functionality?
With the built-in Dynamics 365 financial reporting, Management Reporter (MR), any user can pull information directly from Dynamics 365 without having to replicate financials to a separate cloud reporting solution. You can get near real-time financial statements, although MR does not report on sub-ledger data so you do need multiple D653 report writers for a complete set of reports.
Considerations for Choosing a CPM Solution for Dynamics 365 Finance
While a CPM cloud reporting tool means your organization will be making an additional investment, some offerings have the additional benefit of housing multiple data types from a variety of sources in a singular space and thus enable sharper management reports without having to move between different reporting tools.
With the management of a cloud tool outsourced and the scalability of the solution being a big selling point, you’re able to hit the ground running with simple, quick, and digestible analytics.
A great example of a modern cloud reporting tool that can pull information from numerous data sources is the Solver Suite, which delivers rich reporting and consolidations with all of your company data from Dynamics 365 and other important data sources. When considering which tool to implement, you will have to explore platform options.
In regard to your software platform options, the choices have more recently evolved. Excel is still a bona fide staple, but web and cloud are becoming increasingly more prevalent, as well as proprietary platforms still proving to be a force on the market.
You need to consider whether your team would like to work within the familiarity and flexibility of Excel for report design, the accessibility of web- and/or cloud-based tools, or both. There are a few solutions offering web-based, Excel-powered financial reporting, bringing together the popular spreadsheet application’s formulas and coding with the accessibility of running reports in a web portal from anywhere with an internet connection.
There are also proprietary products that deliver their own platform with their own (non-Excel) features, formatting, formulas, and functionality that most are familiar with, but one of these tools could be precisely what your corporation needs in terms of analytics goals.
Advantages of the Solver Suite for Dynamics 365 Integration
With Dynamics 365, features and functionality like report navigation, multi-language accessibility, parameters usage, and report content formatting are available to choose how you display your reports. But with native reporting tools built into the ERP system, there are also weaknesses, like the challenges involved in running consolidated reports across companies, often with different chart of accounts, different year-ends, or even different ERPs. This is just one area where stand-alone cloud report writers with pre-built integrations to Dynamics 365, such as Solver, can serve as a true solution.
Organizations of all sizes, but perhaps especially in the upper end of the market, require robust financial reporting to remain competitive in the marketplace without any surprises or disruptions. As you shop around for CPM solutions, you will find the on-premises, cloud-based, and hybrid options.
Today’s true cloud platform options include Adaptive Insights, Anaplan, Vena Solutions, Prophix, Onestream, Planful, and Solver. Solver, like Dynamics 365, uses Microsoft Azure as its cloud platform, while most of the other vendors have chosen other cloud platforms. If you are skeptical about migrating exclusively to the cloud, you can choose to keep certain enterprise technologies on-premises if you would like, but do not forget to look ahead with your roadmap.
Most D365 customers want their connected apps, including CPM tools and dashboards, to be cloud based. Key questions that quickly come up are: how hard is it to integrate to D365 Finance and how much cost and effort does it take to get up and running?
The answer typically is weeks or months of effort and tens of thousands of dollars in services. However, Microsoft software partners, like Solver, that work very closely with Microsoft and its partner channel, have developed pre-built integrations as well as out-of-the-box financial reports, planning input templates and Power BI dashboards. For example, Solver’s QuickStart integration to Dynamics 365 can get a company up and running in a single day with 100+ pre-built templates including Power BI financial dashboards, financial reports and budget input templates. All of these ready-to-use forms and templates can be selected and downloaded at no additional cost from a continuously growing Template Marketplace.
The BI and CPM marketplace for Microsoft customers changed once Dynamics 365 launched. Vendors are working to integrate their cloud reporting and budgeting solutions, so Dynamics customers can have impactful options for robust reporting and planning. The cloud landscape will continue to evolve, and as it does, cloud reporting solutions will also change and improve. If your current system is not delivering the insight needed to make the smartest business decision, it’s time to make a better investment – in a true reporting solution.
Modern BI and CPM offerings are self-service in that end users can access and make sense of data without waiting for help from the IT team. That said, the IT team is a great resource and partner in making sure your various applications can integrate seamlessly to maximize productivity and data quality.
Choose Solver CPM with out-of-the-box Dynamics 365 Integration
You can learn more about Microsoft Dynamics 365 by browsing our integration options. Solver, Inc. is happy to answer questions and review the benefits of our cloud-hosted, easy-to-use Excel and web reporting options. Our CPM solution offers both real-time or data warehouse integrated analysis, budgeting and dashboards as a way to accelerate company performance management for Microsoft Dynamics 365 as well as your other business applications.
TAGS: Reporting, ERP, Template Library